Browsing All Posts published on »December, 2011«

In Desert Solitaire Abbey offers us a benediction: May your rivers flow . . . where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls. In this video excerpt from Adventure Journal, surfer/adventurer Kepa Acero lives Abbey's blessing like a master. Infectious, intoxicating . . . >>more

It seems to me the rabid right in American politics today have lost track of some of their guiding principles, some of the great virtues. Ted Williams writes in a recent blog, " we need to grow our web of friends among those who are politically middle-of-the-road or even slightly to the right, and among those in small towns and the hinterlands. Too often we think the only field where we can gather new backers is the progressive/liberal one, but clubs such as Republicans for Environmental Protection, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and Trout Unlimited strongly show that there are more than a few folks caring about wild things who are not progressives, who may even be conservatives." Ted thinks that Piety, Prudence, Posterity are principals that conservatives naturally honor, and if they applied them to how they live in place, they would find they should be, in fact and act, conservationists. . . . >>more

I like this idea of Kirk Johnson's of the Green blog at the New York Times. The fragile Colorado Plateau acting as canary in the coal mine. It doesn't take a dust storm in Arizona to notice that the air is always hazier on the Plateau than it was even 10 years ago. So few people live on the Plateau that man made haze here is a sign of illness elsewhere. ...more>>

"Bipartisan analyses have repeatedly shown that the cost of environmental regulation is exponentially cheaper than the costs of toxic cleanup and medical care." And yet the fearful shriek that environmental regulation "kills jobs" while the hamstrung EPA can't even adequately test or develop standards for two-thirds of the pollutants detected in water. Enough already. . . . more>>